Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing

Your organization is looking to IT for innovative solutions that drive competitive advantage. But it also is asking you to do it with less money. You need a flexible solution. Something scalable, cost-efficient, and easy to deploy.

The cloud can provide your organization with the flexibility you need. It provides you an agile and scalable IT environment with low upfront costs and minimal infrastructure investment. Plus, it gives your organization the ability to sample providers before committing resources.

70% of organizations cited a fear of compromised security as a major barrier to cloud adoption.

The Challenges

Unfamiliarity with and misconceptions about the cloud are major obstacles to adoption. Many organizations simply don’t have enough education and experience with the benefits of the cloud to understand how it helps make your IT environment more flexible. In addition, there may be a sense that your IT department doesn’t have the resources to implement such sweeping innovation.

The most common challenges fall into one of these categories:

Resource Issues

Increasing budget cuts to IT departments are decreasing the time and personnel you can dedicate to cloud initiatives. This creates concerns that you might not have the resources to maximize a cloud investment.

Knowledge Issues

With so few organizations having experience with cloud solutions, it’s understandable why they are hesitant to adopt. There’s fear that IT departments lack the training to administer a cloud solution, plus there’s confusion as to where to turn for impartial information about which solution would be best.

Busting Cloud Myths

Cloud Deployment is Complicated.

Cloud computing can sometimes be deployed for your organization in minutes. Providers have existing applications and infrastructure in place on their servers eliminating the need for in-house software and/or hardware installation.

The Cloud Compromises Security.

Cloud providers are required to utilize advanced, enterprise-level servers employing best-in-class technologies to ensure high levels of up time. They must also incorporate security infrastructure (ISO/ISE 27001 and SA S 70) with regular updates—meaning, you often have better security with the cloud.
49% of enterprise data centers experienced targeted malware/botnet activity as opposed to 5% of cloud-hosting providers.

Cloud Computing Takes Away Control.

While application and process customization may be different in the cloud, there are some ways it is superior. Vendors measure user activity to look for ways to improve applications and processes. The results are frequent upgrades to functionality at no incremental cost to you.

The Solution

Your organization needs flexibility to meet today’s challenges. Public cloud computing offers several options that provide you with adaptability, scalability, and cost-efficiency:

Software as a Service (SaaS)

With a SaaS solution, your service provider hosts applications. Your users will access these apps through a browser or mobile app, so you don’t have to spend time and money installing apps on devices. Beyond deployment advantages, SaaS provides user scalability allowing you to rapidly increase or decrease deployment based on your needs.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

IaaS reduces your total infrastructure costs by providing you with a pool of virtual machines hosted offsite. This allows you to scale servers, storage, networking, load balancing, etc. to your needs and helps reduce your capital IT investment expenditures.

Platform as a Service (Paas)

PaaS serves as a hybrid option between SaaS and IaaS. You get the IT infrastructure needed for hosting applications and the development tools and environment to build and deploy cloud applications. Typically, a PaaS consists of an OS, a programming language environment, a database, and a web server. These setups are ideal for organizations that want to forgo the costs of buying and managing any of the underlying hardware and/or software.